How to Rank Better with User Experience Marketing

This is an excerpt from an article I published on SearchEngineJournal.com. Read the entire article here.

Are Keyword-Based Strategies Obsolete?

You can argue that “classic” SEO is becoming obsolete. What’s not debatable is Google has shifted the metrics of ranking away from simple text relevance to ranking metrics related to knowledge, plus search query rewriting in order to give the most accurate result, regardless if the search keywords are on the web page. Rather than matching keywords to keywords, Google is understanding words in terms of people, places, and things.

Users Share Experiences, Not Links

Perhaps the best kind of link is the kind created because of a positive experience (learning, utility, usefulness, fun). Scientific research has discovered that experiences motivate sharing, and positive experiences are shared the most. Those aren’t links users are sharing. Users share experiences. Hyperlinks are the sharing of an experience. It is experiences (not keywords) publishers must focus on in order to cultivate links and recommendations that will in turn power better ranking.

How to Cultivate Experiences

In my experiences evaluating why a web page won’t perform well, the leading reason is because the web page was created around keyword phrases instead of focusing on what problem the page is solving for a specific kind of site visitor. The problem being solved is what should guide the publisher as to the words used in the title tag and the page heading. Building a web page in this manner makes it easier to outreach and build links, which in turn will make it easier to rank. Read more here.